2024 is turning out to be a E36 M3ty year for a lot of us GRMers, and most recently the reaper came for my 86. Not through engine destruction as you might expect, I crashed it. Into the outside of Moss Corner, or Turn 1 at Shannonville? No, I center-punched a solid concrete column at the base of a lamppost, at an autocross of all things.
It's been a busy couple of days, not long ago I hauled all my equipment home after leaving the car at the shop for a tally of what's broken. The good news is that the mechanic eyeballed it and said it looks like only the tips of the frame "horns" have been compressed, so there shouldn't be any meaningful frame damage. But all of the car's front panels except possibly one fender and most everything ahead of the engine other than the headlights and washer bottle is smashed.
The wreck happened on the 3rd fun run after 6 official runs (where I got the 3rd fastest time, adam525i got 2nd) so I had plenty of experience on the course, which was a pretty simple one. This lot is the one I have the most autocross experience with this car on. I just watched the video of the crash for the first time earlier today and maybe I'll upload it later, but for now I will let you know that it looks dumb as E36 M3, extremely avoidable. One long, smooth slide curving clean into the lamppost that could've been avoided by tightening the slide to the left or extending it to the right. Why didn't I do any of those things? How did a person who dodged zillions of trees in offroad rally manage this? Well I wasn't looking at the lamppost, I was trying to stay on course, countersteering as much as possible without transitioning into a slide the other way, which curved me right toward the post. I never imagined I could hit it. I was looking at the gap to the right of it, on course, where I wanted to go. Until I was about 15-20ft away from the lamppost and sliding toward it unavoidably, I never laid eyes on or thought about the post, and it was just a slightly messed up autocross fun run rather than a desperate struggle to avoid a wreck, which is what it should've become about 20-30ft ago.
Trying to get the car towed turned into its own E36 M3show, at first a club organizer tried to give me one of her full set of annual free CAA tows (a few other competitors stayed late to help me clean up and figure out a towing solution, including adam525i). She slightly upgraded her package to meet some requirement during the call, CAA took a description of the incident and agreed to the destination, sent a tow truck driver, and upon arrival he proceeded to try every paperwork trick he could think of to weasel out of it for some reason, arguing that a police report was needed (for a 1-vehicle wreck on a closed course on private property in a legally sanctioned private event?) and that it could only be towed to the nearest collision reporting centre. Eventually with us on the phone with the CAA and the driver on the phone with his boss, he just started up the truck and drove away. Later a bunch of sketchy dudes with stealthy tow trucks showed up at about the same time, the one we spoke to asked an absurdly high price and tried to use some pressure tactics. I found out that they all showed up because the wreck was mentioned on the local police scanner.
This company closer to the shop I was headed to gave the lowest estimate of the companies I called, ended up undercutting their own estimate by a good margin and did a great job, so I'll give them a plug: https://jimstowingoshawa.ca/
In terms of injuries I've got a sprained rotator cuff and some whiplash. In the video I can see that my helmet hit the airbag which I didn't notice IRL. The doctor recommends physiotherapy.
If I had a real job making decent money at the moment I could probably have the car back out in 2-3 months, but at the rate I can afford to spend I'd be lucky to make it to another event before it's time to put it away for the winter, and next year is a more realistic goal. The plan right now is to do a very basic repair so the car can putter itself around at low speeds on the street, then store the car and save up money, and then take it back to finish repairs once I've saved up enough.
In terms of replacement parts, I have not yet found a stock Toyobaru hood for sale anywhere, even though it appears to be the same part used on all 2.0L models. Maybe they're just too hard to search for among the aftermarket hoods and hood-related parts. From what I can find the only difference between variants for the 2017-2020 models is the front bumper and the headlight internals being different betweem the 86 and BRZ. I have also not found a 2017-2020 86 front bumper for sale anywhere. If I want to convert to a 2013-2016 front bumper, I'd need to swap the headlights as well. Only one headlight got a slight lens crack that I could live with so I'd like to avoid buying more hyper-expensive modern car headlights than necessary.
Having just gone through a similar experience, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially another GRM'er. I never thought I'd be the guy at a track day whose car gets towed away, until it happened. Take care of your injuries and have a smooth recovery. I'm still not over my wreck mentally.
